Black screen + sound loop settings/revirginization issue . . .

Hello and Greetings to the Wii Hacks forums,

I have an LU104 Wii, something I was fortunate enough to win the chance to purchase while overseas, yay military. Jokes aside, this is a Wii I have had ever since they came out. A couple years back I got Super Smash Bros. Brawl, did all the updates and was able to play online. Since then I hadn't played, nor even started the system since then. I moved, hooked everything up and now I can not open the Wii Settings menu. As is stated in the Title, when I go to the Wii Settings menu, it pauses for a few seconds, black screen with the menu music still playing, then it goes into a sound lock loop with a continued black screen. This Wii had been on shelf in a box for a couple years, before I took it back out and found it was semi-bricked. Could only play a couple of my downloaded VC games and a few of my disc based games.

Now, since I can't get to the menu to try and format the system, thinking it might be a software issue, I decided to softmod it. I think it was on SM 3.2 or 3.3 when I started it back up and used bannerbomb to install Homebrew. I have tried numerous wad loaders like DOP-MII, Wad Manager, YAWMM and the like. Everytime I tried to load a wad downloading them through the NUS downloader and putting them on an SD, Dop-Mii would get a hash error and not install the "update". Finally was able to update to SM 3.4, don't remember exactly which method I used because I tried many things, but I THINK it was using Dop-Mii to update to 3.4 via a wad. Unfortunately that has been the only wad I have been able to install via Dop-Mii.

I have installed some older versions of IOS's, obviously not stubbed ones, to try and get my disc based games to play without using the disc updates. I know I could use Preloader/Priiloader to "turn-off" the update partitions, but I am honestly trying to get my Wii working back to stock. So I got everything updated to SM 3.4U, and no such luck, still had discs locking up and the Wii Settings menu still locked up.

So I next used BootMii to make a backup, which was of the 3.4 update(let me finish before you criticize this action). I tried using ohneschwanzenegger, and yes with the "Revirginizing" guide. The interesting thing that happend with me was that every "clean" install I did, would not boot. But, if I did an update on the backup'd up nand it would boot. So, even though I was progressively upgrading the IOS/SM I still could not open the Wii Settings menu, wether it is updated to 3.3, 3.4 or 4.1, or having the SM's reinstalled. When I do a clean install, it won't even boot up, nothing but a black screen.

This leads me to believe that it is a hardware issue. I have my set of tools coming in this way, and hopefully I can affirm my concerns that this is either a hardware failure (I hope not), or a disconnection (I seriously hope it is that simple).

I know this is my first time posting on this site, and if anyone is willing to help, I am more than happy with providing more info or clarifying anything that doesn't seem to make sense.

1 User Says Thank You synthogen For This Useful Post

After many attempts to correct my issue, it would appear as though I have fully bricked my wii. I did not want it to come down to this, but alas I must ask for some more assistance.

As stated above, my intentions for modding may have been misguided, but had a point. To rehash, I couldn't access the Wii Settings menu, would always black screen+sound loop. I couldn't play some of my Wii games, Super Smash Bros Brawl would not work at all, disc would spin up and the wiimote hand would disappear. Also many of my GC games would not work either, and all my games are original discs btw. With bootmii/boot2 installed and HBC the system would boot-up fine, could even boot into the bootmii menu with the SD card inserted. Though I did have problems trying to get certain things to run, like Preloader/priiloader and certain Wad managers. Dop-Mii seemed hit or miss on the wads I could get it to install, most errored out because of signatures and refused to install. Made several attempts at creating a "virgin" nand using ohneswanzenegger, but it wouldn't for some reason. The odd thing about using ohne was that I could update my nand copy to another version, reflash it, and the wii would boot up. I would still have the same black screen errors mentioned before, but the system would still work. But every time I created a new nand from the copy and installing any SM, be it 3.2U, 3.3U, 3.4U, or 4.1U, the Wii would just black screen on boot up. I made sure I had the right keys in the new nand, and made sure the settings.txt was correct (it's not that hard, just changed the serial, everything else was default) and I didn't even add ANYTHING else to it, just used the Revirginizing instructions. I was able to boot into Recovery Mode with these black screens, but I couldn't get it to work. I have even tried booting into Recovery Mode and inserting a new Wii game disc, New Super Mario Bros Wii in this case, and the FW disappears from the corner and the disc spins up, but it just continues to sit on a totally black screen. I used to have a similar issue with updating from game discs ever since I got Super Smash Bros Brawl.

Well, now the way that I bricked it for what would appear to be for good, was doing the following steps. Keep in mind I do have(had? can't verify this, will explain further down) boot2 installed. So I created a new nand from a backup. Now, if I remember correctly I think I had installed 3.2u on it to start with, but then decided to start as far back as I could go with the US updates and install from there. So the order was 3.2u, decided to start from the beginning 2.0u, 2.2u, 3.0u, 3.1u, 3.2u, 3.3u, 3.4u, 4.0u, 4.1u, 4.2u, and 4.3u. I did this with the intention of creating a new nand that would appear as though it had actually updated over time. I figured this wouldn't be a big deal and that if it did black screen like all my other attempts I would just revert back to my backup like I have done before. Btw, I did check it with nandBinCheck.exe to make sure it was valid, no errors, and only two warnings both of which were for the Korean keys that weren't present. I flashed this nand and now I get a black screen(who would have thought right?), but I can no longer get to boot2 with the SD card in the slot. I can boot into Recovery mode, says 4.3(USA), put in New Super Mario Bros Wii, FW fades to black as disc spins up and proceeds to do nothing else. So now I feel a bit SOL. Every auto-boot disc I have tried don't seem to get as far as a regular game disc does, though it is a "clean" nand so no Trucha or cIOS249. I do have my original nand backup and the nand from the last flash if anyone is curious. The funny thing is that when I run nandBinCheck on my original backup, there are quite a few errors yet the stupid thing would boot, but a clean one that passes error free wouldn't.

Any help/assistance/questions/comments on my stupidity, would be greatly appreciated.

1 User Says Thank You playerkp420 For This Useful Post

It was bought while I was overseas, but on a US military base, so yes I am certain it is a USA version, as am I certain the serial number starts with LU.

I tried the softmod guide section you specified, but still no success with booting from the SD card like it should with bootmii boot2 installed.

I looked through a couple of the other links you provided in the spoiler and I have a question. I was looking at the Savemii free sites Wii Brick Flowchart provided on the OH SH*T: Black Screen of WII!!! thread, and it looks like I have a Branch D brick. Do I have to have the Savemii dongle to perform the first step in the flowchart? What I mean is, if I use a GC controller to boot into Recovery Mode, is that the same as saying yes to the Wii booting with the Savemii dongle installed? The reason I ask this, is because it looks like it might be a bad/misseated BT, but how can you tell if the BT module is bad?

1 User Says Thank You playerkp420 For This Useful Post

See, that it is just it, EVERYTIME I have reflashed a clean nand, it would do this. And by "this" I mean black screen and of course the wiimotes not synching. But before I could just reflash it to the backup, resynch the wiimotes, and back to the old busted, yet working, original. I really appreciate the help. Odd question, but could I theoretically open the wii, remove the BT module, boot into Recovery Mode and attempt to boot off a game disc? Would the game disc boot without the BT module in and if it does would definitely prove that it is a bad module? Or in other words a bad BT would even prevent a game disc from booting in Recovery mode? Sorry I know this is a lot of questions, just trying to troubleshoot as much as I can before purchasing parts that may or may not be necessary.